Endermen
by Nevvarchive
Summary: View of the monsters in Minecraft, inspired by Endermen. Although I liked them better with green eyes.
1. One

We slipped out of the shadows one night, my elders tell me. We were brought to this unknown land, from an unknown place, for an unknown purpose. The others here, they accepted us blindly as if we were their own. But that was only because they did not think, or feel. They were not even much in control of their own bodies. They followed a blind pattern that told them vaguely where to go and what to do.

Luckily, we were not like them.

There was another, though, in this land, with which we shared a likeliness. It was the ones around which this land was centered, and thrived. They were beings who thought all the land was theirs, just because they came across it. It was, of course, but there was no reason why.

It was rumored that they killed everything they came across, to salvage their skin and bones and meat, and that is why we pursued them.

We all wanted desperately to die.

Sulking in the darkness, in a land with no light or life, to painfully burn to ashes before the sun fully peaked, and to be reborn once the moon had risen once again…

To never have it end…

Every once in a while, one of us was brave enough to make the trip. They would brave the three days of wretched pain to be freed from eternity. The rest of us stayed in the caves, too cowardly to die.

The other night dwellers seemed to not feel the pain of the burning light of the sun. They cried out but seemed to not hear themselves. They were content to live outside and be scorched by the rising sun every day. Though they showed some sign of consciousness. They would charge at the Ones when they saw them, making a last break for freedom.

When I was younger, when I was first hearing these stories, I always wondered why my kind did not just stay in the caves, did not just content themselves with staying in the dark.

But as I grew older, I would sneak away from my elders and explore the caves, going a little farther up each time. And finally, when I was almost fully grown, I found a small hole, just barely big enough for one of my kind to crawl through.

And as I gazed out to the bright, colorful world, filled with life and joy and mystery, a world so different from the dull walls of dirt and rock I had grown accustomed to, I knew.

We were drawn to the outside world, and to the sun, like moths to light. It was nature, and if we did not stay true to our nature, we would not be what we are.

So, you get sucked out into the world, and then you experience your first morning. You can't stand the thought of going back to the cave, so you keep going. And another morning, and the crippling pain comes again. You keep going, slowly breaking, but still eager. Still in awe of all the new and amazing things. And then, on the third morning, you break. You are too far from the safety of the cave, you are out in the unfamiliar, you dread the next morning filled with suffering, only to be repeated again and again.

And then you see a house.

So here I am, fully grown, but still young, sick and tired of this bloody cave. Sick and tired of this bleak life. Anxious to see what's out there. Not even realizing, after my own analysis, that I am a moth about to fly into the light.

My elders would never let one as young as me leave. Usually, when my kind start the journey, they announce it in front of all the others, and we celebrate, if you could call it celebrating. We bring together mushroom soup and raw cave fish and have a small feast, and they call the one leaving brave, a hero, and they idolize them.

Even though their will shatters three days after that.

But, for me, there is no celebration. I have told no one. I'm sneaking out at dusk, right before everyone wakes, but with enough time for me to get outside. No one would dare follow me past that point.

It takes a bit, but I find the hole. The sky is oddly purple, streaked with clouds textured like thin wool pulled even thinner.

I see other night dwellers rising up from their ashes and dug dens, and know it is safe. I step out, feeling the strange texture of grass, and the soft warm wind, so different from the cold breezes in the caves, blowing across the field.

I let my jaw fall open and I breathed in deeply, inhaling the sweet air filled with so many tastes and scents and sounds.

Something snapped in my brain, and I felt myself moving forward, without a thought at all. I was not registering the world around me anymore. I just heard the steady beat of my square feet hitting the ground as I walked forward, never changing direction, never stopping.

I could see the light.


	2. Two

I pushed through trees, climbed mountains, trudged through snow, and crossed narrow bridges over water, on my never faltering path, and there was still no sight of what I was headed for. My mind started refocusing, and registering what I was doing, but I found myself unable to stop.

The world grew a bit lighter, and I looked up. The sun was rising. I longed to look for a cave opening or a large, shady tree, but I couldn't. My body seemed unaware of the impending doom.

The sun peaked, and the world burst into flames.

After the pain, and the heat, and the agony, there was darkness. But it wasn't the darkness of night, it was the darkness of a place that saw no light.

I had spawned in a cave below the land.

It wasn't my clan's cave, I knew, or at least, my clan hadn't been here. By listening to the echoing wind I could tell this cave was very, very large, and might, eventually, connect to my clans' somewhere in its twisting corridors.

But no, there were none of my people here. Only the others.

The nearest ones turned their heads towards me, probably wondering what I was. Odds were they didn't get many of my kind around there. But then they turned away and shambled on, and I even watched as a skeleton made a wrong move and plummeted off the side of a ravine.

The sound of bones shattering made me cringe, but I realized I had to find my way back up. I tried to focus on that mindless path-finding instinct that had taken me over earlier, but I could feel nothing, not even a tug in a specific direction.

At the moment, I was standing on a narrow platform, with the ravine to the left, and a solid wall to the right. Ahead of me, the platform narrowed into a thin path jutting out of the wall, which then curved up and away from sight.

My common sense told me that heading up would be my best bet, so I cautiously walked along the narrow ledge. Accidentally slipping once and making a small rock crash down into the abyss below. It landed a few seconds later with an echoing clatter that cut through the silence like a knife. I could feel the eyes of all the undead locked onto me, even the ones down below who couldn't see me. I froze, and waited for them to avert their eyes. After half a minute, they were still boring into my soul, and I couldn't take it anymore. I quickly leap the rest of the distance to the lip of a cave in the side of the rock, and almost lost my footing, but straightened up and ran into the mouth of the cave.

It led upward at a steep incline that I could barely navigate. I tripped a few times, causing little rockslides and huge noises echoing off the walls again and again, leaving a ringing in my ears.

Then, suddenly, there was light, and I lurched to a stop, and stood there, dumbly, wondering when the burning would begin.

But there was no burning.

I opened my eyes, which I realized were clenched shut, and I saw that I was still in the cave, and I saw what hung from the wall.

A stick, with a lump of ever-burning coal fastened to the top.

A torch.

I stared at this, and realized this was a human's work. They'd been into the caves. They'd explored this far.

I peered beyond it, and saw more torches littered throughout the cave, all the way down the corridor, and off into the branches around it.

They'd explored this far, and chances were, they'd explore more. They'd kill the others, and, eventually, if they found us, they'd kill my kind.

Maybe that was a good thing… we'd all be set free.

No… we'd die out. Everything here was put here for a reason, and we can't be destroyed until that reason is gone.

They've penetrated the caves, they've lit the comforting dark.

Is nowhere safe?

* * *

><p><em>Ugh, finally got myself to writing again.<em>

_And once I'm writing, I don't stop. C:_

_Hoping to get the next chapter up in a few days._


	3. Three

There was nowhere left to go but forward, so I continued on, in the lit tunnels. I repressed the terror in me at the sight of the human's work and the thought that there could still be one down here by reminding myself that, if I did run into a human, I would have accomplished what I set out to do.

I'm not sure why that thought made me even _more_ terrified.

After what seemed like an eternity of wandering down the winding tunnels, I reached a small set of stairs leading up, hidden in a corner. I barely fit through the small gap, it was obviously made for a human.

I surfaced in a small house, made out of strips of trees. Just this initial observation sickened me. The idea of destroying something and making a shelter out of its shredded body was nauseating to my people, and, even though I knew the rumors of the destructive and murderous humans, the confirmation of at least some of them horrified me.

I put my hands over my face and barged into the door, making it fly off its hinges and barreling past it, before even looking at anything else in the shelter.

I staggered a few steps onto the grass, silently cursing myself, realizing I should have at least checked if it was day first. I removed my hands and opened my eyes. It was night.

I took a few deep breaths, and looked around, making sure to skip over the shelter. A forest. But a clearing around the house. But I could see signs of where the trees were cleared away, a stump barely peeking out from the ground, a pile of leaves with nothing over it, a log, nearly rotting, that was dragged near the house, not fully cut into small planks, saved for further use. They didn't even plant saplings in place.

My stomach growled.

How long had I been traveling?

There was that first night, then I was in the cave. I probably spent at least the night and the day in there, maybe even another day.

So… now I was here. After two, maybe three, days.

Just like I thought I would be…

But the human was nowhere in sight.

I glanced quickly at the house. I was curious to see what else was in it. I steeled my nerves, took more deep, long breaths, and walked calmly inside.

There was a table with tools strapped on the side of it near the door, and a sideways stone basin with racks and burnt out coal beside it. A large painting filled one wall, and on another wall, there was a door leading to another wing of the house. There were a few chests on the opposite side of the door, and I curiously, and awkwardly, pushed them open with my fingerless hands.

Lots of rock. Lots and LOTS of rock. Tools, with wicked curved but solid blades, used for smashing open rock. More tools, with sharp, flat blades, used for chopping down trees. Flowers, plucked from their stems, laid to rot. Mushrooms, pulled from the ground. Saplings, not bothered to be planted. I gasp. Here comes the worst part.

Raw, bloody meat, obviously animal. Rotten flesh, ripped out of zombies. Bones, pulled from skeletons. Silken string, collected from spiders.

Small, round spheres, that shift colors, usually with a black background, but with swirling, teal blue patterns, never in the same place, constantly moving.

Ender Pearls.

The common belief with my people was that one's life was preserved in an Ender Pearl upon death, and that the purity of their heart affected the beauty of the pearl. Some could be brilliant and bright, while others could be slow and dim. And since my people believed death was the greatest freedom, we would burn the pearl in lava, on the morning three days after death, as a sort of rite for the one who passed, a way of sending them to their final freedom.

It was a thing of extreme sacredness to my people.

And this human had a dozen of the pearls sitting in a box.

I turned away and retched, thoroughly horrified. The thought, of the souls of the passed trapped there, sitting, forever unreleased from the grasp of the In Between, carelessly thrown in with the rest of the remains from the insentient ones.

I choked back something between a sob and a retch and a moan, and then I froze. I heard something.

Footsteps.

Closer.

I turned my head in time to see the doorknob to the other wing of the house turning.

I knew what I had to do. I gently scooped all the pearls into my arms, then sprinted out the open doorway, running as fast as I could but making sure not to drop any. I heard shouting behind me, but I didn't look back. I saw zombies and skeletons turning their heads toward me, but I paid them no heed.

I ran.

* * *

><p><em>ugh. so much stuff is going on right now for me. sorry<em> _about the extremely slow updating._


	4. Four

Spider webs spread across the sky. No, white limbs of barren trees. Clattering bones. Rods of lightning.

Then I focused, and made out glowing purple facial features, long, slender bodies, tapering tails, and snouts, with wicked, pointy teeth.

The thin white tapering lines were parts of wings, hundreds of them, soaring over the sky, carving loops and shapes and signs into the air.

These creatures were familiar to me. I'm not sure why, but I recognized them. They incited a feeling of awe and insignificance in me.

But there were hundreds of them.

An endless void, a glowing land, a blackened spire, more of them. I noticed long, slender bodies dotting the bright landscape. Were they…?

One of them appeared in front of me. I expected it to say something, but it just stared at me with enlarging eyes, and a slowly dropping jaw.

And suddenly we were on one of the spires.

"You have tortured countless of my kind," It spoke to me in a hollow, rasping tone. "You have trapped us in the Void, without release."

"I've done nothing!" A voice that came from me yelled, though I was sure I hadn't said anything. "I simply came to see!"

"No," it rasped. "You have come to die."

A crushing force swept me from behind into the air high above the ground. As I fell, I caught a glimpse of my arms trailing above me.

They were human.

And then I hit the ground.

I jolted awake to a searing pain in my leg. Jerking it towards me, I saw the wound, revealing dark red flesh beneath, slowly turning black, with flecks of brilliant orange. The shadow had moved, and the sun had changed position, falling on my leg, and burning it. It was now setting, and the shadow of the large tree above me was rapidly receding. I crawled, being careful to put little weight on my leg, to the other side of the tree, where most of the shadow was, now. I looked back and saw the pearls glinting in the sun. I had set them out, hoping and wondering that they would burn in the sun. They did not.

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes as the burn continued to eat away at the flesh in my leg. I had no idea what to do about it. My kind knew nothing of burns, since we avoided lava and the sun. We knew that water put out fire but we did not try that on account of the legend that we melted in water.

I had to do something, or else it would burn clean off. A weak and recovering leg was better than a short and permanent leg. Thinking on a whim, knowing leaves had a small amount of moisture in them, I tore a large, glossy one off the tree above me and wrapped it around my thin leg. It put out the fire, but did not make it feel any better.

I resolved I'd worry about it later, my goal was in destroying the pearls for now. I awkwardly pulled myself up, using the trunk of the tree, and leaned against it, keeping my leg off the ground. I reached up and , promising to only do this once in my whole life, snapped a long branch off the tree. I winced at the sound, and patted the trunk, as if apologizing to it. Then I tested the branch. It was sturdy enough. I used it as a cane, trying to ignore the flaring of pain if my leg even grazed the ground. Almost half the flesh was eaten through, and if my kind had normal blood, I would have bled myself dead by now.

I turned my mind away from the injury as I gathered up the pearls and hobbled further into the trees, the sun having set safely, and the moon now rising, a gleaming water-pearl in the sky. I wasn't sure how I could destroy the ender pearls. I didn't know where to find lava. I knew it was mainly in caves, but I didn't know where to find a cave. Sometimes, I knew, there were lava pools on the surface, bubbling up from underneath. So I walked through the forest, scanning all around for a gleam of light.

I tripped.

I hit the ground an inch or two away from a gaping chasm in the forest floor, the opening small but the chasm huge. A few of the pearls slipped out of my arms. I frantically tried to grab them but that caused more to slip out and topple down into the deep chasm. Each one, as it hit the bottom, made an ugly smashing sound that made me wince.

I could not get down there. The only way was to jump, and that was suicide.

I would have to leave them.

I closed my eyes for a second, then got up, keeping a careful grip on the remaining five pearls. I carefully walked around the opening, sending my prayers up to the sky for the poor souls smashed into some other realm.

I was walking, still searching for light, when I felt a burning pain in my arm. There was no sun. I felt the spot where it burned, and my hand came away burning, too. Another sharp pain came to the top of my head, and then to my shoulder. Then, I saw what it was.

_Rain._

I ducked inside the shelter of a tree right before the downpour started. Droplets still leaked through the leaves, splattering me in searing pain. I didn't know if water would melt me, but it sure burned.

I looked around for something, anything, that would better shield me. I saw a faint light far off. I ran towards it, not thinking, just moving, bracing myself for the pain.

It was worse than the sun.

But less damaging, thank goodness, and as I got closer to the light, I saw what it was: a torch, underneath a leather canopy, jutting out from a cliff side. Shelter from the rain.

I quickly slid under it. It provided not enough room for me to stand but I could sit. My legs would hang out the other end, so I pulled them close to my chest. A thought came to me. Would the pearls dissolve in the rain? I looked at them, scooped up in one arm, and saw that there was no visible damage. I considered putting them out in the rain, but then wondered if they could feel pain, and, if they could, if the rain would dissolve them at all, and not just burn?

So I kept them close. And I slept, exhausted, my only sleep in three days having been the nap under the tree.

I woke to night, and, looking at the moon, I knew it was the next night. The rain had stopped, and the ground was mysteriously dry. I shuffled to get the pearls back in an easier position to hold, grabbed my cane, and slid out of the shelter, then stood, and looked back at it.

It was small. Small enough for a human, but… still. It was obviously abandoned. I had been there for a day and nothing had disturbed me. I could not think of an explanation for it, so I moved on.

And I walked. And I walked.

And I rounded a tree, and found myself face-to-face with a human.


End file.
